Jan 13, 2015

This Discussion Should Really Set The Stage For The Disability Trust Fund Debate

Roswell [GA] Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Price intends to
tackle big-ticket entitlement programs as the new chairman of the House
Budget Committee — including Social Security.

In a speech at the Heritage Action for America “Conservative Policy
Summit” on Monday, Price said he was excited to work with a GOP-led
Senate to end the “muddled mess” of the last few years. ...

“So all the kinds of things you know about – whether it’s means
testing, whether it’s increasing the age of eligibility. The kind of
choices — whether it’s providing much greater choices for individuals to
voluntarily select the kind of manner in which they believe they ought
to be able to invest their working dollars as they go through their
lifetime. All those things ought to be on the table and discussed.”

Price consistently framed entitlement changes as Republican desires to
“save, secure and strengthen” the programs, given their rising costs
that are a big driver of future deficit projections. ...

He said Republicans should not fear the politics of such changes —
pointing out that the Romney-Ryan ticket won seniors in 2012, despite
Democrats’ “Mediscare” tactics around the Ryan proposal for a
voucher-like premium support program for Medicare. ...

6 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I like their catchy slogan "save, secure and strengthen." I've noticed that politicians love alliteration. They even emphasize it by doing things like pounding the podium in time to the words, just in case we might miss their speech writer's cleverness.

I would like to propose a new word for consideration. When a politician uses alliteration to convey a meaning which is the exact opposite of what they are really trying to do, the word should be slightly altered to reflect the rhetorical feat. I propose "allitteration." Just one extra "t" alerts the reader to the nature of the phrase and its true value in a debate.

They only won seniors because seniors in the US are overwhelmingly white and conservative (this link http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk indicates that the over 50 crowd are over 4 to 1 white/all others).

It's the same reason why our old and wise and mostly white politicians and other "very serious/important" people think that raising retirement age is a fine idea, as they are all white collar workers who cannot fathom people becoming unable to continue their work or dying before the age of 85.

I know the people who shouted that changing demographics would turn the tide this past election (with claims like Texas is already a purple state) got a lot of egg on their face, but the census numbers really do make it seem inevitable that there's going to be huge erosion of the base for the GOP as all these old white people die.

You know who becomes old conservative white people? Young conservative white people. And claims of a new permanent Democratic demographic majority fail to account for massive Republican voter suppression, Dem voters are not reliable in the first place and turnout is easily suppressed. There's no D revolution just around the corner. Republicans have a death grip on power and theyre not going to just turn it over.

even if white people stay as conservative as their elders, the change in demo will hurt the GOP as the percentage of whites gets lower and lower.

Now, if they can wise up and get latinos, asians, etc. onboard instead of alienating them with all their jingoistic, xenophobic wingnuts, they can make up for those losses and even grow the party. But I don't see much of that, at least not currently with immigration. And as the world gets less religious, they have fewer and fewer hot button social issues to get those folks' votes.

Republican Representative Sam Johnson, of Texas, who authored the rule change, said it was meant to protect Social Security retirement benefits from being "raided" by the "fraud-plagued disability program" and to encourage reforms.